Using data from large, representative national samples in in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Australia, Finland, and the Netherlands, we examine moral norms about just rewards for education. Comparing these norms in East Central Europe shortly after Communism—where the dominant ideology was egalitarian, schooling free,rewards to education modest, and alternative investments absent—and in market-oriented societies where the opposite held, provides insight into the influence of institutional arrangements on moral norms. We find that the publics in all these countries favor large rewards for education (which legitimates substantial income inequality), showing that these moral norms are resilient to institutional arrangements. These results align with Aristotle’s claim that people believe job performance merits reward because it makes valuable contributions. They undermine alternative theories: credentialism, radical egalitarianism, and the hegemonic power of dominant political elites. These results also undermine economists’ human capital arguments insofar as they are seen as a moral justification for income inequality.

This paper analyses trends in social mobility in Poland in the process of system transformation to market capitalism. Using data from the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN, it compares social origin effects on educational attainment and on occupational status of the first job as well as the impact of formal education on the latter. The analysis is performed over four cohorts that have entered the labor market: (1) between 1983 and 1989, (2) between 1990 and 1998, (3) between 1999 and 2006, and (4) between 2007 and 2013. With regard to the impact of social origin on attainment of tertiary education upon entry to the labor market and on the status of the first job the analyses show stable social origin effects across time. Furthermore, there is evidence of a rising polarization of the effect of educational level on occupational position in the first employment.

This paper undertakes the issue of how the organizational culture of a certain institution is being experienced by reconstructing the leading themes coming from auto-observation and descriptions of it. Still, instead of investigating how it is perceived or how its values are verbalized, the study referring to the actual experiencing of certain spaces, social relations, as well as how these are being conceptually embraced therein has been undertaken.

To do so, phenomenological methodology and the analysis of qualitative data—adjusted to the research framework at hand—have been employed. Throughout the observation of bodily and mind responses, the lived experience under scrutiny has been given a leading role in regards to determining whether and how the research preconceptualizations should be superseded by the perceptions of the organizational reality under study, as seen and experienced by those who actively partake in the institution at hand.

This research refers to how the University is being experienced by the students of one of its degree courses.

This paper presents information from a nationally representative Polish survey in 2014 on the types of dispute resolution preferred by the respondents. It places the findings in the conceptual background of studies conducted since the mid-1970s in Polish sociology of law on the subject of disputes and the use of the courts. The purpose of the analysis was to identify the more general types of dispute settlement preferred in the popular legal culture in Poland, and the socio-demographic variables that correlate significantly with these preferences. The significance of social position, as measured by a version of the Center-Periphery index, has also been confirmed.

This paper presents the results of fieldwork concerning local development programmes addressed to poor Indian women and the social changes they effect in the marginalised Mazahua communities in central Mexico conducted from 2011 to 2015. By analysing the operation of a women’s cooperative I show how neoliberal ideology, which is at the core of development schemes, incorporates both the feminist ideas of gender equality and empowerment of women, and the Mexican tradition of politicising maternity in a crisis to establish new social hierarchies, subjectivities, and power relations, promote individualistic attitudes and a new, “market-oriented” morality, and reinforce political clientelism, leading to profound and usually detrimental (for women and local gender relations) changes in the functioning of native communities.

Holy Land Experience is a religious theme park in Orlando, Florida. The city is home to some of the main theme parks in the United States, however, Holy Land Experience is not a typical one, and in official flyers it claims not to be a theme park at all, its role being, instead, educational. Holy Land Experience is a plaster replica of Jerusalem from the times of Christ, spread on 15 acres of land.

At the same time, it is an interesting example of promoting spirituality using tools attributed to entertainment. Inside the theme park Christianity is shown offering a direct, emotional experience using imitations of Biblical places and events. Indeed, according to the visitors, the overwhelming artificiality of the place does not thwart religious feeling. At Holy Land Experience spiritual experience is merged with entertainment and a sense of America’s uniqueness.

Polish Sociological Review – The English-language versions of publications were financed on the basis of decision no. 573/1/P-DUN/2017 by funds allocated by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for the dissemination of knowledge.

Polish Sociological Review – digitalization of publications and monographs in order to ensure and maintain an open access through the Internet is financed by the decision no. 573/1/P-DUN/2017 allocated by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for the dissemination of knowledge.